Ontario court fines two firms N22.7m for death, injury of workers
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CANADA: AN Ontario Provincial Offences Court has fine a potato farm, RJM Farms, $82,500 (N14,104,000) over the death of a migrant farm worker due to negligence.
The worker was crushed by a potato hopper assembly, it was learnt.
Similarly, the Barrie court imposed $50,000 (N8,600,000) fine on a restaurant, Kenzington Burger Bar, after a worker suffered burns from hot oil in the kitchen.
In addition to the penalty, the court presided over by Justice of the Peace, Dennis A. Wilson, also imposed a 25-per-cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act on the two firms.
The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime, GatewayMail learnt through the court records.
The two firms had contravened the Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act Section 25(2)(h).
It was gathered that the farm worker died on May 27, 2013, when several workers were running a seed potato cutting line on RJM Farms, located at 5980 5th Side Road in Egbert, southwest of Barrie.
The workers were required to remove a conveyor from the line and replace it with a potato hopper used to process seed potatoes.
The workers, who realized that the hopper was not high enough to reach the conveyor, used bottle jacks to raise the container-frame assembly.
While one worker stayed near the middle with a level to make sure it was being raised evenly, the other workers extended the bottle jacks to raise the assembly, and a worker was situated under part of the jacked-up load to gain access to the bottle jack when the assembly suddenly fell.
The worker was crushed between the frame of the potato hopper and the axle and died on the spot, and this incident informed the decision of the Ministry of Labour to launch investigation.
The ministry found that the hopper container-frame assembly was raised beyond the height of the anchor posts of the wheel-and-axle assembly.
Also, the hopper’s wheels were not chocked, nor was the elevated hopper container frame assembly blocked securely and solidly to prevent it from accidentally falling.
The ministry discovered that while elevated, the wheel-and-axle assembly was vulnerable to rolling away from the hopper, causing the bottle jack to overturn in the opposite direction.
It was the first time the worker had performed the task of adjusting the hopper.
The company pleaded guilty to failing as an employer to take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of a worker.
And the injured Kenzington Burger Bar worker, with colleagues, on March 15, 2014 were in the kitchen of the restaurant located at 40 Dunlop Street East in Barrie when one worker was tasked with cleaning out and filtering hot oil from a commercial deep fryer.
To complete the task, the worker used two aluminum stockpots to drain oil from the deep fryer. After the oil was drained into the pots, they were placed on the floor, and while reaching for a third pot, the worker stepped back and a foot slipped on the slippery floor, causing the worker to come in contact with the pot filled with oil.
The contact caused the oil to spill over onto one leg, and the worker suffered second – and third – degree burns.
A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the temperature of the oil at the time of the incident was about 330 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Though the method which the injured worker used to clean and filter the oil was a regular work practice; however, the injured worker was not provided with any information or instruction on how to safety-perform the task.
The injured worker was not wearing anti-slip footwear or other forms of personal protective equipment or clothing for the task.
The court records show that the defendants failed to provide information, instruction and supervision to a worker to protect the health and safety of the worker, contrary to section 25(2)(a) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
The company pleaded guilty and was fined $50,000 on November 24, 2015 while the court gave it two years to pay the fine.
